


The Next Step

by BeaRyan



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Brotp, Gen, rude language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 21:23:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaRyan/pseuds/BeaRyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason attempts to help Tom move forward after the loss of Julia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Next Step

Tom shifted uncomfortably on the worn velvet couch and rolled the tassel on the pillow between his thumb and forefinger, giving it a firm tug to see if he could rip the ridiculous beaded thing off and throw it across the room. This whole place was wrong. No woman would ever be worthy of a place as Julia’s successor, even if only briefly, a certainly not one he rented by the hour. He swallowed the lump in his throat before announcing, “This was a mistake. We should leave.”

“Dad,” Jason said, “One of the few great pleasures in my life is quoting you back to you, so I’m going to say to you what you said to me on my fifteenth birthday. ‘It’s your dick, not the blood of Christ. Go stick it in the whore.’” 

“Don’t sass me, boy.” 

“You can’t punk out when you see Justine Allenford. You need to be able to bring it, no matter what ‘it’ is.” 

“I will not fail. That woman and every person behind her will pay for what they did to my Julia.”

“It’s easy to be confident sitting on a couch and you’re already trying to run. You need to man up. Do a little sparring before you try street fighting.”

The French doors opened and a dozen girls paraded into the room, forming a line in front of the Neville men. They ranged in age from fifteen to forty and covered a variety of sizes, ethnicities and costumed fantasies. Jason's breath caught when he met the eyes of a blond in low slung cargo pants and a tank top. She smiled at him and a contrived look of lust put a sparkle in her eyes. Behind the twinkle he saw the iron core that only wanted his money and the night shift to end. 

Tom continued. “If my Julia isn’t gone when I find her I can never explain this away. There are things I haven’t told her, but I’ve never intentionally kept anything from her.” 

The blonde winked at Jason and licked her lips, shifting her arms forward and forcing her breasts to spill up into the U of her tank top. 

“Let’s get out of here,” Jason said. 

__________________________________________________

The beat of the drums hit Tom in the chest as they walked through the doorway of the nightclub. He wondered if he was finally having the heart attack Julia had always worried about. His regular encounters with bullets and knives hadn’t phased her, but his father had died of heart disease at forty-five. He vowed to eat some fish for lunch tomorrow. 

“You want help or you got this?” Jason asked.

“What do you expect me to do?” Tom asked. He forced disdain into his voice to mask his fear. 

“Go be charming. You don’t have twenty-six years of goodwill to fall back on. Getting it in is harder than you remember.” 

Tom grabbed Jason’s shirt. “What the hell did you just say?”

Jason blanched as he began speaking. “Mom knew she liked what you were serving. That girl,” he pointed to the closest one available, “Doesn’t know you from Miles Matheson. She’ll be looking for bullshit and if you reek of it you’re dead. At least here it’s not literally dead, unlike when you go up against Allenford. Go practice on the civilian.” 

“That girl is a six,” Tom said. “I can bag a six with a head cold and a hangover.” 

Jason fought down an eyeroll and a snicker and instead took a broad-chested challenge stance. “Then do it.”   
_________________________________________

“She threw a drink in my face,” Tom slurred. “She actually threw a drink in my face. How do girls her age even know about that without movies?” 

Jason squinted his eyes shut and clenched his teeth as he sat hunched over on the park bench. No good would come of laughing in his father’s face, but he was enjoying the hell out of seeing Captain Failure-Is-Not-An-Option fail so spectacularly. 

“Welcome to being single, Dad,” Jason said. “That girl in Ohio that you sent me to drunk-terrogate while we were looking for Mathesons dumped a drink on me and tried to light it. Lucky for me hard cider doesn’t burn well.”

Tom clapped a hand on Jason’s shoulder and leaned against him, letting his son do the work of battling gravity in his stead. “I hate this shit. Never thought I'd have to do it again. I was always sure I’d die first. I’d be a thousand miles from home and one day it would suddenly be over. You’d drop out of the militia to take care of your mother, marry a shop girl, and give her grandchildren. I had a plan. I made sure you’d be able to take care of her when I couldn’t.”

“Dad, don’t.” 

“The bitch of it is, even if you hadn’t become a rebel, she’d still be gone. We’d have been on the road and she’d have been burned to death in Philadelphia instead of Atlanta.”

A confident female voice spoke. “It’s unforgivable what the leaders of the Monroe and Georgia Republics did to the citizens of this great nation.” 

The Neville men lifted their heads in unison, each noting a sensible pantsuit, a holstered sidearm, and perfect teeth beneath a straight nose. Secretary Allenford was not a woman who scrabbled to survive. Neither man acknowledged that they recognized her. 

“They say they’re bringing the US back,” Tom said. “I saw a woman the other day preaching unity and restoration. God knows we need it.” 

“Do you want the United States back?” she asked. 

“I want everything back,” Tom answered.


End file.
